The Film:
As Asian horror continues to grip Western audiences thanks to the success of DVD, more and more copy-cat films are released. Usually it's Hollywood remaking Asian films with the likes of The Grudge starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Dark Water starring Jennifer Connelly and The Ring starring Naomi Watts and they are being released with great success, even if they aren't as good as their original Asian counterparts. It's not just Hollywood stealing ideas from the originality of Asian horror films, but it's also Asia 'borrowing' from their own films, as is the case with Unborn But Forgetten, which itself, could also be called a rip-off of American film Feardotcom.
Unborn But Forgotten, or Hayanbang to give the film it's native name, stars Eun-Ju Lee (who unfortunately committed suicide in 2005 over her families disgust at her nude scenes in 2004's The Scarlet Letter) as reporter Han Su-Jin. After finding out about the mysterious deaths of pregnant women whose insides have dramatically expanded during labour, she spends some time with Korean detective Lee Seok (Jun-Ho Jeong). With him, she finds out that all the women have died fifteen days after viewing the same website called White Room. Unfortunately, her inner-self gets the better of her and she ends up viewing the website also. I'm sure you can guess the rest of the story, as herself and Seok must race to crack the case before she dies aswell.
The story for the film is nothing we haven't seen done before, the most obvious example being the similarities with Hideo Nakata's Ringu in which instead of viewing a website, it's people watching a videotape who are dieing. The acting is OK with the two lead roles doing their best, but unfortunately there isn't too much in the way of character development and I didn't find myself particularly liking the characters. The actual scares are few and far between though the dark atmospheric feel to the film does a lot to give you the creeps. Filmed well, and acted OK, it's just the fact that this has been done so much better elsewhere that ultimately lets this film down for me. Still worth a watch though and I recommend it to fans of Asian horror, as long as you don't have high hopes for originality.
The DVD:
Video:
Asia Video Publishing have doen a mediocre job with the transfer. Presented with an anamorphic transfer at a 1.78:1 aspect ratio, it is very slightly cropped from the 1.85:1 original aspect ratio. This doesn't really do much to annoy however, and it's really become standard practice. The film uses a lot of very dark settings throughout but unfortunately not everything is very clear and the contrast levels are low. We also have a variable amount of dirt and grain throughout and some minor edge enhancement. Could be a lot worse, could be a lot better.
Audio:
We have been give a choice of two audio tracks for the release by Asia Video Publishing: Korean DTS 5.1 and Korean Dolby Digital 5.1. For the sake of this review I watched the film with the DTS track and it doesn't do much to impress. Relatively quiet and not using the opportunities available to really crank the surrounds and LFE it's a little disappointing. There's no background hiss or damage to the sound though which is a good thing. We have subtitles available in Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and English. The English subtitles were gramatically correct for the most part and free of spelling mistakes. They were also easy to read and moved at a nice pace.
Extras:
None
